We haven’t died. Nothing quite so melodramatic. In truth, we’ve been visiting with dear, dear friends and having WAY too much fun to think about blogging. A thousand appropriate apologies, yadda yadda. The other reason I haven’t been blogging is because my (STUPID!!) computer is malfunctioning badly. Long story short, it crashes and burns without so much as a “by your leave,” and it doesn’t have enough RAM (Rumply Angstful Misgivings) to open my bigass 32 ziggaquad camera card. (My computer-speak is impressive, no?) It simply refuses to do it. So, not only can I not sort out my photogs and choose ones that I think you might like, I can’t even look at any of them without my computer having a contusion…or a conniption, or whatever you call it.

In happy news, though, I think I’ve managed to outsmart it. I won’t say how because if I type it out, my computer will read it and know what’s going on. We can’t have that. So shush, okay?

By way of an update, we’ve now left Florida behind and are holed up on the beach in North Carolina (Yeah, life sucks). I’ll fill in the details shortly. In the meantime, here’s a fluffy bird in case you were in need of one:

We decided to head to the beach today. The plan was to go to Clearwater where we’d been before. It’s just such a gorgeous spot to walk in the surf, collect shells, or just loaf. Unfortunately, it’s not as gorgeous when it’s over-crowded. I have no idea why it would have been – Spring Break is over now as far as I know – but it surely was. Happily, we found another beach nearby that the hoards of sun-worshipers hadn’t yet discovered.

Even though you can’t see me, I’m actually hiding in this picture:

And, here’s a picture of Bob, finally not thinking about work:

And, just for schitts and giggles, here are some turtley things – I think they’re actually showers:

Since I promised that there would be absolute NO bird photogs in this post, here’s a nice picture of a guy fishing:

I have no idea what that grey thing is in the foreground. I swear that wasn’t there when I shot this.

And, finally, here’s a shot of a tree:

Note the interesting foliage.

So, that was pretty much our day. We got back fairly early, so after a big taco blow-out for dinner (and the ensuing flatulence fest), we did some laundry at the campground facility, and now I’m off to bed.

Okay, Okay, I know I’ve been sorta carried away with the bird photogs, but seriously, there is just such a smorgasbord of birds in this place! It’s pretty mind-blowing. Every day we are seeing things we’ve never seen before. I promise I’ll try to shoot something non-birdular tomorrow, okay? But, in the meantime…. (oh, don’t look at me like that)…

In other non-bird news, we sort of saw some manatees today. I say “sort of” because we mostly just heard them coming up for air. Bob saw a nose. I saw nuffin’. Well, no, that’s not entirely true. I saw some bubbles. Still, it was pretty cool. If we could just persuade them to swim in nice clear water so I could get some photogs, that’d be good. Sigh.

I know you don’t particularly care about my bird buddies, but that one up there is called an Anhinga. These guys are really interesting because they swim in a weird way. The body is submerged with just the head and neck above the water. The first time I saw one I thought it was a snake. I think I read somewhere that it has to do with their bone density. I have no idea. They can apparently only stay submerged for so long until they have to climb out of the water and dry their feathers. That’s what he’s up to in this photog.

The Great Blue Heron in this next shot was having a heck of a time with whatever that long skinny fishy thing is in his mouth. It was thrashing to beat the band. I was so intent on watching him that I didn’t notice the Little Blue Heron in the background until I was uploading my photogs.

We had a wonderful Easter Dinner today with our very dear friends Whatsisname and The Missus. Excellent food; excellent company. And maybe just a couple of Easter eggs. I’ll have a good waddle around tomorrow to make up for it. Hey, maybe we’ll find some birds!! 🙂